Among the nations of Europe, Sweden has taken the lead in imposing choice, competition, and high-stakes testing. Sweden has vouchers, so students can take their public money to any public or private school they want. Sweden also adopted a national curriculum.
The result: a falling quality of education, lower results on international tests, and increased social stratification. This is an example of what Finnish educator Pasi Sahlberg calls GERM (the Global Education Reform Movement), characterized by choice, competition, and testing.
Swedish educators await the release of the next PISA exam with trepidation, but the education minister of the conservative government is already prepared with excuses, ready to blame the Social Democrats, who were in power until 2006, or to blame teachers, whose profession has fallen into low esteem as a consequence of government policies.
Note that Sweden is demographically similar to Finland, yet its schools continue to decline as Finland attracts the admiration of the world.
What is Finland doing right? What is Sweden doing wrong? Should the Swedish people accept the minister’s assurances and wait “several more years” to see the promised success of vouchers, choice, competition, and other GERM policies?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Sweden also adopted a national curriculum.”
Mediocrity and monopoly are the inevitable consequences of standardization.
“I believe in standardizing automobiles. I do not believe in standardizing human beings. Standardization is a great peril which threatens American culture.” –Albert Einstein
Real innovation comes from competition among competing ideas. Voluntary, competing frameworks, standards, curricula, and pedagogical approaches would best serve a complex, diverse, pluralistic society that treasures independence of thought and the uniqueness and diversity of children and of teachers’ approaches to their jobs. A single, invariant set of national standards promulgated by an unaccountable, distant, centralized authority serves the interests of those whose goals are complete command and control. Every totalitarian state has nationalized standards and national curricula. There are reasons why that is so.
Sweden has always had a national curriculum, and the situation is much more complex than that you can only find one reason for different changes.
And, I also would like to mention that Swedish schools is not all bad – we do well in many areas. And sometimes we get people from Finland coming to us to study these areas, as we study them in others. However, one of there advantages – not introducing many big reforms – is difficult to redo….
Of course results in PISA, and especially the decrease in inequity, is to be taken seriously. However, national goals and national curriculum is hardly to blame, and it has been quite decentralised in how to achive the goals set. National standard tests has however been increased in tha past years which is a different thing.
As being close to the national reforms for many years, I am always surprised that one of the big changes introduced in the beginning of the 90s is seldom discussed, namely high anticipations set out in the curricula – that all children should reach the goals set and that it is the school’s responsibility that this goal is reached.
If we really got this in the system, that each child’s success is the responsibility of the schools, and stop focusing on what the children do wrong… I beleive we can reach this goal. However, I don’t see different organisational changes can do this for themselves, it has to be a mindset change for everyone working in and with school.
We can see good results where this approach is taken, more or less independent on the organisational structure.
Teacher wages are too low in Sweden. Teachers quit and suitable teacher students choose other professions to get better paid. Sad but true.
Forgot to say that Swedish children/pubils are too used to computers, cell phones, video games and other technical stuff that steal their attention, both at school and in the spare time. The pupils are not enough interested in boring subjects and education. And who would be, when there’s a computer and an XBOX console waiting for you at home??
So there you have it in a nutshell. Choice, standardization of curriculum, high stakes testing and vouchers is the recipe for disaster. There is no arguing about it or compromising with it. GERM is a scary reality and is infecting the world, not just the USA. Ask the students and families who most recently took to the streets in Madrid, Spain and the stories sound exactly like where the USA is headed. We know how to stop the spread of this dis-ease.
Sweden has been wrestling with this issue for some time. Here is an interesting take by way of a comparison between Sweden and Finland. The comments at the end of the article add additional perspectives.
http://www.economist.com/node/11477890/comments#comments
The link for the article is
http://www.economist.com/node/11477890
Fascinating stuff; thanks very much for sharing. Some interesting clips:
“Sweden aims to produce socially conscious generalists. The Finnish system, by contrast, drives rather narrowly at academic success.”
“There certainly is segregation in Finnish education, but it happens between classes, rather than between schools—and very, very early.”
“Another is Finnish diligence. In a country with harsh weather and, until recently, a largely agrarian population, it is understood one must work, and work hard. Students took the PISA tests seriously, leaving very few questions blank. That boosted scores, since there were no marks lost for wrong answers. And Finnish children are good at tests, too, because they get them in school all the time, to help them understand how they are doing. “Tests to Finnish children are important but not scary,” he tells me.
Tim,
This is silly. I have no idea where you got your clips but I visited Finnish schools, and I saw a climate that was focused on children’s interests. I saw lots of arts, performances, recess, collaborative learning.
Your quotes describe Korea, not Finland.
Finnish students are used to taking tests prepared by teachers who are very highly accomplished professionals, not tests created by a centralized command and control authority. Big difference.
The last thing we need in this country is an all-powerful Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth.
Bernie, I know you enjoy being devil’s advocate but the article you posted is from 2008. The Swedish policies have been in effect for 7 years now and the updated Economist article outweighs the opinions from the comments section (and they are simply opinions). Five years of reforms that need another ten years to know if it works is silly. I think we know that Sweden’s policy hasn’t worked.
Sweden is following the Milton Friedman model, which has been a disaster in Chile.
Steve K:
My understanding is that the Swedes started introducing vouchers in 1992 and their use has increased over the intervening period.
A 2012 study by Anders Böhlmark and Mikael Lindahl was summarized as follows:
This paper evaluates average educational performance effects of an expanding independent school sector at the compulsory level by assessing a radical voucher reform that was implemented in Sweden in 1992. Starting from a situation where all public schools were essentially local monopolists, the degree of independent schools has developed very differently across municipalities over time as a result of this reform. We regress the change in educational performance outcomes on the increase in the share of independent-school students between Swedish municipalities. We find that an increase in the share of independent-school students improves average performance at the end of compulsory school as well as long-run educational outcomes. We show that these effects are very robust with respect to a number of potential issues, such as grade inflation and pre-reform trends. However, for most outcomes, we do not detect positive and statistically significant effects until approximately a decade after the reform. This is notable, but not surprising given that it took time for independent schools to become more than a marginal phenomenon in Sweden. We do not find positive effects on school expenditures. Hence, the educational performance effects are interpretable as positive effects on school productivity. We further find that the average effects primarily are due to external effects (e.g., school competition), and not that independent-school students gain significantly more than public-school students.
Emphasis added
Click to access 719140684.pdf
Bernie,
Wouldn’t that study be seriously debunked on the basis of Sweden’s steady PISA plummet? The referenced article in the blog is from the Economist. Not exactly a pinko publication. I mean, studies can prove anything. Econstor might have been commissioned by groups who wanted a specific outcome.
This is the problem with data. It can be used to prove or disprove anything.
Steve:
Did you read the Lindahl paper?
The authors state:
Our positive estimates might appear surprising given Sweden’s relative decline in scores on international tests such as PISA since the mid 1990s. However, we do not find significant positive effects for the earlier years, when Swedish relative test scores declined most dramatically. Additionally, because we look at variation across municipalities it can very well be the case that the municipalities with few or no independent schools have contributed most to this decline. Either way, we do not find any support for the belief that an increase in the share of independent school students provides an explanation for Sweden’s relative decline.
Simply discounting a study because of its findings is pretty lame. I am sure that if there was a serious defect in the study, those opposed to vouchers in Sweden or elsewhere will have written a rebuttal. It is your turn to add something of substance to the discussion.
Bernie,
I hardly have the time to read through an entire 49 page research finding that seems to have uncertainties in its findings. Phrases like “it can very well be” are hardly filled with certainty.
I’m currently spending my evening looking through the document-based essays that my students submitted today.
We can be on different sides of this. That’s fine by me. Sweden pursued a policy that doesn’t appear to be working. I mean,the whole reason that so-called reformers get in a tizzy is because of PISA scores (hence Race to the Top). Sweden’s scores are lousy compared to places that don’t have their policies including a relatively similar neighbor.
This is my contribution: Whenever critics of public education get measured by the standards they insist are accurate, and don’t get the result they like, they trot out isolated studies to support their point of view. I’m not sitting around trying to find a competing study that debunks Econstor. I don’t have to. American education supposedly stinks because our PISA scores aren’t competitive. Therefore, so does Sweden’s. Sweden is actually worse because they don’t have the poverty issues that we have here.
The competing study IS PISA. We can argue all day. Choice makes no difference. If choice is so wonderful then why do Milwaukee and Detroit have abysmal scores? Milwaukee’s had vouchers for 20 years and numerous studies have shown that to be a failure. Detroit has had competing charter schools since 1991 and routinely gets the worst test scores in the nation. An article in the past week in the Detroit News (pretty much a Tea Party paper) pointed out that high school enrollment in DPS is up because kids are leaving charter high schools.
Choice is merely a way for people to segregate their kids from other kids. If choice were doing such wonders in places like Sweden and Chile, why are they not topping the charts?
Steve:
I appreciate your civilized discussion here since partisanship seems to interfere with open discussion. I recognize the limitations of complex regression models and made no claim as to the definitiveness of Lindahl’s results. But nor am I going to dismiss their results out of hand. As is frequently the case with empirical research in the social sciences, data and the analysis thereof is seldom definitive. Estimating the impact of increased choice on educational outcomes is bound to be tricky with the models likely to be under-specified.
I am not sure that the use of PISA and similar types of aggregated standardized metrics can be anything more than rough indicators that serve to be provocative and prompt additional questions. I certainly am not so taken by rankings as opposed to how many people can answer particular types of questions. For example, I am frankly more concerned when nearly 40% of 17 year olds in the US taking the Math NAEP do not know the sum of the interior angles of a rectangle, cannot calculate 200% of 30 or identify perpendicular lines – rated as easy questions on this test..
Choice is also the way that families can get a Montessori education, a progressive education, a Waldorf education for their students. Should those approaches to education be restricted to the relatively affluent or available to all?
Bernie,
I also enjoy a good conversation. In re-reading the linked Economist article, I found a couple of items that could be of interest.
The article mentioned that the best students were flocking to the same schools. Is this Sweden’s version of segregated schools? Granted those schools could be independent schools or public schools, the article doesn’t specify.
But the article noted that teacher pay in Sweden keeps worsening and they face a teacher shortage on the horizon. Could this be a key factor for the Swedish score decline as well? I point this out because that is definitely in line with US policymakers. Bust unions,hire TFA, reduce pension and benefits. Then wonder why people view teaching as an unattractive profession. (Note: While not rich by any stretch of the imagination, I’m fine with my pay. For now.) Where exactly is that money to schools going?
I’m not going to tell you that I’m fine with schools as they are. We can always try to do better. The part that irritates me is that people act like teachers aren’t trying. I’ve been through 5 sets of standards in my career. CCSS will make 6 and I suspect it won’t last. (People have yet to realize how much Smarter Balanced, for example, will really cost.)
But I will tell you that standardized testing has been bad for students. NCLB was a decade long setback. I’ve been teaching for 18 years in the same community which has changed very little in terms of SES factors. I have a very low proportion of quality thinkers compared to what I had my first 5 years. Kids are good at systems and routines but worse at actual thinking.
We can do better and I’m willing to try things out and listen to other ideas. But I’m tired of taking hits for what I do.
TE,
Those options should be available. In fact, that’s what charters should be doing. But they aren’t in a majority of the cases. I have multiple colleagues who have taught in charters. I have former students who have taught in charters as well.
What they describe is not a system of innovation but a test-score obsessed culture that gets concerned about the financial bottom line once March hits. When charter schools are held to the same standard, have the same transparency and can be prevented from skimming, I’ll have more faith in choice. And if you’re going to make the argument that bad charters fail, I’ll disagree. Charters have become very skilled at marketing and if you read more articles about Sweden’s system, they note that the independent schools (non-public) offered IPads and other enticements to enrollees.
I have a friend who is on the board of a charter school that provides education to teen mothers. It’s really innovative. They provide child care for the girls and offer standard high school diplomas and / or job training possibilities. I respect that mission. That’s what charters should really be doing. But most aren’t.
If you think there should be options, there must be choice. I think it is unfortunate that even teachers refer to Montessori education as private education, only available to the wealthy.
“For example, I am frankly more concerned when nearly 40% of 17 year olds in the US taking the Math NAEP do not know the sum of the interior angles of a rectangle, cannot calculate 200% of 30 or identify perpendicular lines – rated as easy questions on this test..”
That bothers me a bit as well. The important thing to remember is that scores have continued to rise for all subgroups if I’m not mistaken and at a faster pace before the reform movement took hold. I am probably more interested in 8th grade scores; 17 year olds do not tolerate being forced to take tests that are of no value to them, especially now in Testamania. (Please don’t ask me what % of 17 year olds are test adverse!) Eighth graders would be more reliable.
2old2tch:
The problem with aggregated metrics like standardized tests is we focus on the overall score and forget about the actual content. It would not matter so much if the scores were high – but they are not. What some might describe as the formative aspect of these tests deserves more examination.
You may be right about 17 year olds and aversion to tests – I will have to go through the same exercise with NAEP test questions for 14 year olds. That said, these are the easy questions and some were answered correctly by a high percentage of test takers – so it is not as simple as individuals just not trying very hard. The question about identifying which pair of lines were perpendicular simply requires familiarity with a pretty basic concept. Even the hard questions are pretty straightforward and certainly require very little advanced math.
That’s why I agreed with you. I am not comfortable with having so many kids not able to answer these questions. I still find it important that scores have risen. Past generations did WORSE. I could probably generate a list of reasons why so many students missed those questions, but one question I would be interested in knowing is how many were currently taking math classes. I don’t know whether many high schools require four years of math. In the dark ages, we were only required to take two years. I took three; my senior year SATs suffered as a result, and we didn’t study for SATs back in the day.
2old2tch:
Good question, I do not know. Another point in favor of looking at 8th Graders. But again, you may not have studied Math for a long time – did you have any trouble with the questions? I am genuinely perplexed as to what the test takers found difficult about these questions.
I didn’t have any trouble with the questions. As a special education teacher, I actually taught math through first year algebra and I rewrote one of my kids’ geometry books in the process of staving off failure (successfully). I spent several years as a substitute teacher at the middle school level and like to say that I could ace a high quality middle school curriculum. It was through the process of breaking down math concepts for my special ed students that I really understood them myself. I also began to play with numbers in ways I never even thought of in the past.
Bernie…
Thanks for your comment concerning learning from your students. I have science degrees in both astronomy and physics (as well as secondary certification in two states), but I found my greatest satisfaction teaching a “physics for future art and English majors” course. Pyrotechnic mathematical manipulation may “feel good”, but only when one grasps the underlying conceptual framework can one begin to “know” the area of study.
I have only met a few Nobel laureates, however they all could express themselves in very simple, jargon-free, terms. Perhaps, they were outliers. I hope not.
John:
Can you clarify? I think your comment must be for someone else.
However, I have actually had the good fortune of doing in-depth interviews with a number of Nobel winners – as part of a study of top research scientists. As you say they were very clear and straightforward. I am just reading a bio of Dyson and he also fits your characterization. However, there are others who certainly do not fit – Paul Dirac comes to mind.
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/public/2013/11/1105-columbus-school-levy-defeated.html
Columbus Ohio school levy failed. It was promoted as providing equality of funding for charters, because they would tap into local funding sources with passage. It’s the first school levy to fail in Columbus in 23 years.
I almost feel sorry for charter parents. Reformers sold charter schools as providing more bang for the buck, with claims that all we need are high expectations and to get rid of those lazy middle aged teachers, but of course public schools require public investment.
The line they used to gain “market share” against public schools has come back to bite them, and now they won’t get funding support for their own schools. Both public schools AND charter schools lose. Maybe promoting “failed and failing public schools” for a decade wasn’t such a great idea after all.
Maybe they can do a kickstarter or apply for a grant or something, right? I’m sure they can operate with no money as long as they have enough “grit”.
Maybe they should beg the Billionaire Boys Club.
Which is easier
Teaching 5,000,000 kids or in Finland the 1,000,000?
Which country has 5 million school aged children?
Finland’s population is 5.4 million, Sweden’s is 9.6 million.
If evidence was used for making decisions in Washington DC or in most state houses we would be living in a very different world… The GERM crowd is the same group who promote austerity economics despite the fact there is no evidence that it works… and we know all too well about the trickle down theory of economics in our country…
“. . . the trickle down theory of economics. . . ”
Didn’t you get the memo? The name has been oficially changed to the ‘pissed on theory of economics’.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
It is altogether appropriate to standardize the threads of screws. But when the state takes it upon itself to standardize ideas, such as ideas about what should be taught, how, when, and to whom, we’re in big trouble. There’s a name for such standardization. It’s called totalitarianism.
When the authorities standardize education they screw the threads of ignorance into society.
One could easily mount the same defense for Sweden’s education that Diane offers for the United States.
There is no education crisis in Sweden. By almost every measure–per capita income, per capita GDP, percentage of knowledge workers, diversity, even equality as measured by Gini coefficient–Sweden’s economy is stronger than Finland’s.
Swedish schools that are attended by well-to-do native Swedes are among the strongest in the world; it is the schools that have a concentration of recent immigrants and refugess that fare poorly on international assessments. Sweden has a much more liberal attitude toward immigration than Finland–16% of its population was born elsewhere, as opposed to 3% in Finland. Finland has an immigration policy that would make American Tea Party adherents proud: immigrant children born in Finland do not automatically become Finnish citizens.
Finland has one of the world’s oldest and most demographically homogeneous populations. Its performance on standardized international assessments is certainly impressive and worth further investigation, but there are fundamental apples and oranges differences. And of course no one here ever wants to go into great detail about the teacher quality piece.
No one wants to go into great detail about the teacher quality piece? That simply is not so. You overgeneralize. I have written many times on this blog about teacher quality, and so has Diane Ravitch. My position is that you have very high standards for entry to the profession, focused on ensuring that prospective teachers have an extraordinarily command of the subjects that they are going to teach, of child development, and of the cognitive sciences of learning. Then, you let these professionals make their own decisions instead of have them be ruled by a distant, centralized, totalitarian authority.
Quality flows from the bottom up. You know what flows from the top down.
cxs: extraordinary, not extraordinarily. Sorry about the typo
having, not have. Sorry, that post was written in haste.
Robert:
I agree that Diane raises the issue of Teacher Quality at various points in her book. However, the implications and details of both what you and Diane call for are seldom, if ever, articulated. Who is going to make the contemplated changes? Do the old teacher training institutions and practices continue? What happens if some teacher training programs up their standards and others do not? What are the consequences for those teachers who were selected and trained under the old system? Are the commensurate changes in certification and licensing requirements? Do we simply wait for attrition and retirement to replace the old with the new?
My understanding is that in Finland, over a relatively short period of time during the 1970s, the old teacher training institutions were essentially dismantled and new programs were introduced within Finland’s top universities. How should it be done in the US?
Bernie, first of all, you echo the corporate reformers who constantly complain that kids get low test scores because of “bad” teachers, not poverty. That’s hogwash, and you know it.
Second, any state can raise the standards for entry into teaching. Require a BA in a subject and at least a year of teacher preparation and practice teaching. That eliminates TFA and most alternative certification programs. Nor should online degrees be accepted for teaching.
How is that for a start?
Diane:
In what way am I echoing Corporate Ed Reformers any more than you or Robert are?
On page 276 (RoE) you say, without qualification, “States should raise their standards for certifying teachers.” Presumably you say this because you believe that the current standards are deficient is some way. The rest of my questions follow: How will that actually work?
Sahlberg and many others repeatedly point to the critical role their change in Teacher Training and the quality of those training for teachers has had on Finnish Education? Are they echoing Corporate Ed Reformers?
As to your suggestion that States can “Require a BA in a subject and at least a year of teacher preparation and practice teaching.” I agree, but that is a long way from the restructuring of teacher education undertaken by the Finns. Are you saying that such a restructuring is not needed in the US?
dianerav: game, set and match.
Thank you for your comments and your patience.
🙂
Dr. Ravitch,
I have a clarifying question. When you state that “no online degrees should be accepted for teaching” do you include all online (or mostly online) masters and doctoral programs?
The education school at my university is about to roll out a large scale online MA program that it expects to generate a lot of revenue at little expense. If teachers did not receive an automatic raise for graduate credits I suspect the education school’s enrollment in these classes will disappoint them.
Bernie1815,
“. . . under the old system. . .”
There is no old system. There are as many systems as there are schools of education/teacher prep.
Duane:
OK, “old systems”.
Tim, do you know if immigrant children born in Sweden automatically become Swedish citizens? What’s the teacher quality piece? Teacher quality is not ignored in this venue.
Nice catch. I assumed that because Sweden had such a vastly higher percentage of immigrants that they had a looser citizenship policy. It’s actually very much the same, although they confer citizenship to immigrants in a shorter timeframe. However, the point about Sweden’s having a much more liberal policy on immigration stands, as does the point about Finland’s monoculture.
When I say that no one ever wants to talk about teacher quality, I should have been more precise. Everyone is happy to agree that teacher quality is important, but very hazy on how we’re going to make it better and how long it’s going to take.
Tim,
Why don’t you read Pasi Sahlberg’s “Finnish Lessons.” Finland did not always have successful schools. Finland changed its schools over 30 years and changed its teacher preparation and closed down almost every private school. Finland made a decision to have an equitable school system and they achieved not only equity but excellence. Please inform yourself before making comments that are demonstrably false.
The quotes were cut and pasted from a 2008 feature in the Economist. 2008 was a while ago, but well after the point at which Finland had begun to dominate the PISA rankings. The author of that piece extensively quoted Finnish teachers and officials; I have no reason to believe they are inaccurate or made-up.
Sweden, like the US, is a middle-of-the-road PISA performer. My point was that many of the same arguments you make about why it doesn’t matter for us could also easily be applied to Sweden.
Diane:
The picture for Finland is more complex than your comment suggests.
Click to access 91660.pdf
The 1990 Digest of Education Statistics shows that as far back as 1981-82 Finland ranked 2nd behind Japan on Math for 17/18 year olds, 5th behind Japan, Hungary, Netherlands and Canada in Science for 14 year olds and 3rd behind Japan and Korea in Science for 10 year olds. The US ranking and scores were much lower.
(Tables 364 and 366 ) The 8th Grade Math Scores for Finland in 1981-82 were slightly below average.
Ed reform in Finland had just begun.
I do not now the details of the testing samples, etc., but these scores suggest that the Finnish system was already functioning reasonably well – though there were some marked regional and SES inequities.
From The Local, a Swedish news site: “Today, children born in Sweden to parents who aren’t Swedish citizens assume the citizenship of their parents.” http://www.thelocal.se/20130429/47604
From Wikipedia: Swedish nationality law determines entitlement to Swedish citizenship. Citizenship of Sweden is based primarily on the principle of jus sanguinis. In other words, citizenship is conferred primarily by birth to a Swedish parent, irrespective of place of birth.
In general, children born in Sweden to foreign parents do not acquire Swedish citizenship at birth, although if they remain resident in Sweden they may become Swedish later on.
Has anyone read any critiques of the PISA test? I have my doubts about it. In Amanda Ripley’s “The Smartest Kids in the World”, the test is described as a new generation, “smarter” kind of test that tests “critical thinking”. This sounds disturbingly similar to descriptions of the new Common Core tests which I fear are frauds –they purport to measure intellectual ability in a meaningful way, but I suspect the ELA tests at least only measure dogged determination to perform pointless and painful cognitive chores. I don’t doubt that Finnish and Korean schools are good, but I really wonder if the PISA test is the best measure. Could it be that the PISA is as stupid as the Smarter Balanced Assessments, and that the FInns and Koreans excel at it mainly because they’re the most doggedly determined?
You can find examples of the PISA items and try them out yourself. Whether they are seriously flawed or not is another question. They appear to be quite reasonable to me.
No, Bernie, they aren’t seriously flawed, they are fatally flawed.
Ponderosa,
You might be interested in the take on Ripley’s book over at the Daily Howler:
http://dailyhowler.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-progress-gaps-and-scandal-amanda.html
Spoiler alert: He pretty much takes it apart.
Ponderosa,
The PISA tests have the same errors in construction, in the giving of and in dissemination of the “results” as all other standardized tests that result in the whole process being completely invalid. Any conclusions drawn are “vain and Illusory” as Wilson has proven in his never rebutted/refuted study: “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at:
http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A quality cannot be quantified. Quantity is a sub-category of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category by only a part (sub-category) of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as one dimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing we are lacking much information about said interactions.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. As a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it measures “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self-evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
Reblogged this on 21st Century Theater and commented:
Again. This is neoliberalism in action. Everyone involved in trying to save public schools needs to understand the neoliberal agenda inside and out. The ideology of neoliberalism has been used to formulate a series of policies that are employed by corporations and the governments they purchase to privatize and impose other “structural adjustments” throughout the world.
The bad news is that if we only fight the battle against school “reform,” we may lose the war against total corporate control of every single aspect of our lives. The good news is that understanding school “reform” is just a piece of a much bigger puzzle will help us see that we have potential allies all over the world who are experiencing the same thing. Time to organize world-wide to fight corporate rule.
My comments here address the issue and contain a link to a primer on neoliberalism:
http://21stcenturytheater.wordpress.com/2013/11/06/all-fall-down/
Reblogged this on in search of schools that can change the world and commented:
Whenever the success of Finland schools is discussed , it is often said that Finland is a different country, it has a different demographic than the US so we can’t really trust the education outcomes experienced there as being able to transfer to the US.
Yes..Finland is different particularly in their quest for equity instead of high scores on standardized tests. Now there is data comparing Sweden..a similar country demographically to Finland. Both countries are not as homogenous as they were several years ago having experienced an influx of immigrants who tend to live in clusters, and arrive with the usual issues we have come to know about culture merges of this nature.
Sweden has taken on a national curriculum and a competitive approach to schooling similar to the US. Finland remains true to principles of equity for all children. Read about what is becoming known as an international problem GERM.
An article from February this year that describes the Swedish education system w/ reforms. This article tends to be glowing about the reforms.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/feb/05/sweden-private-profit-improves-services
The term GERM sounds more scary than the one we are commonly dealing with. I have a hunch that many OECD countries are beginning to ride on the wave of education reform under the name of global competition by using PISA scores. My home country, Japan, is getting so much obsessed with the competition that the right-leaning central government is pushing really hard on new form of testing for academic achievement and college readiness. Conservative educators and critics suggest that Japanese students need to be tested for academic learning skills every year, since Japan dropped the rank in PISA test scores ten years ago. I don’t see a point in enhacing student testing because Japan’s overall performance is just fine. My main concern is the excessive burden on students and teachers who are forced to toe the line with government’s rigid instructional guidance. They are so lucky that public education is not yet to be sold for privatization, as of today. But who knows? If Japan’s prime minister applies his privatization principle to public education, that’s when people begin to worry about.
Hasn’t the basic takeaway from testing been that performance is correlated with socioeconomic status? There seems to be no way around that fact. By all reports, teachers cannot educate 23% of our children out of poverty. Society as a whole has the responsibility to decide how (or if) we should handle the vast inequities in opportunity that exist. I haven’t seen any evidence presented here that contradicts this basic premise: poverty creates roadblocks to success that most people cannot navigate on their own. Our society is obviously doing things to exacerbate the problem since more and more people are sliding toward or into poverty.
2old2tch:
I meant to respond to you earlier. The statistical answer is that since the correlation is significantly less than 1 other factors are also in play. In addition, aggregate variables like SES have little operational value – to improve scores what aspect of SES do you change? The same is true of the notion of “poverty”. But discussing such constructs is fraught with political incorrectness – so all I will say is you have to look at the correlates of poverty before introducing measures of poverty into some type of explanatory model.
Bernie,
The danger in waiting until we can adequately model all of these factors is that we ignore them. By golly, that’s exactly what has been done! In fact, we punish children for being poor. We cannot quantify the effects of hunger, homelessness, poor health, violence,…but that does not make their effects less real.
I am a big fan of your work Dr. Ravitch. I am a teacher and doctoral student at Seattle University in Educational Leadership and just got back from studying at Uppsala University in Sweden. I was in Sweden taking a study abroad course studying Swedish Social and Educational Policy. Throughout my learning there I visited a school and spoke with students, teachers, and a headmaster about their Swedish education system. I have read Finnish lessons and read a lot about the Finnish education system. I was actually a little disappointed at first that we actually were visiting Sweden and not Finland. However, after my visit in Sweden, I feel like I learned much about why Sweden was “failing”. The government changes since 2006 according to the people have affected the funding going to the public schools. Most people I talked to felt that this will change in the next election and the taxes will increase again to give more funding for schools. I never heard much about the standardization. In fact, it was a breath of fresh air when I did not hear about “testing” there. The school I visited anyway was full of joyful learning, lots of “play”, and an emphasis on a balanced life including integrating healthy living into their life. The Swedish students and teachers I met anyway, were so happy and seemed to love school. There was no talk of testing except when the headmaster shared with me how frustrating it is to be compared with Finland on the PISA. They say they are NOT like Finland demographically at all. In fact according to people in the education world I spoke with (higher ed and K-12), the biggest issue in Sweden is that there are many immigrants (mostly from the Middle East and Easter European countries) coming to Sweden in large numbers. The Swedes I spoke with believe (especially if you talk with educators) they are not like Finland at all and do not like to be compared to them because Finland only allows 1% of immigrants into their country, while Sweden has currently has 10% of their population now who are recent immigrants. This as we all know in America affects our classrooms. When we have children coming to our classrooms not speaking the language that we must adapt our practices. The larger issue some say though are the cultural issues. For example, the headmaster shared with me how many of these students have families that are not involved in their education. This is typically not the “Swedish” way. We in America know these challenges in the classroom. For us, if we had a homogenous society like Finland we may most likely be at the top of the PISA scores as well. So what I learned in Sweden… we can’t compare Swedes and Finns. We can’t compare Finns to us here in the U.S. at all! It made me look at our amazing education system and be even more in awe of our teachers. Here in the U.S. we not only have lack of funding, high diversity in language and cultural (which is beautiful but we can’t deny the challenges), and standardized tests that are driving the joy out of education but we are still working hard to create achievers and lifelong learners every day. We never give up.
Size, diversity, and socioeconomic status matters in the classroom and we must acknowledge this. We are a melting pot, let us not deny the beauty of that and also the challenge it poses in every classroom in the United States. We are a democracy, let us celebrate that freedom and also recognize the inequities it brings in every classroom in the United States. We are a country that wants to stay competitive, grow globally and economically, let us invest in our smartest teachers by making them even smarter and by providing early childhood education, funding for professional development, and encouraging prestige. If we began judging our education system by economic growth like other countries do instead of a standardized test scores (yes, even the PISA) maybe we’d be more proud, more in awe, more indebted to the American classroom teacher.
Typical liberal trick — present selective information and lead the reader in the desired direction.
In recent years thanks to liberal policies, Sweden has been overrun with third world immigration – mostly African muslims. Not surprisingly, a Google search will show that crime in Sweden – rape, murder, robbery are through the roof – along with poverty in immigrant areas.
I want to see demographics of this report broken down by race/ ethnicity on school performance. And then we will know the real cause.
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